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Another Future
Poetry and Art in a Postmodern Twilight
Sales Date: 2006-03-27
272 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 in
What's next for contemporary poetry?
How do we write and think about poetry and visual art in the wake of postmodernism? Questions like this are central to poetry and art, especially when taught within an academic context. Another Future is a collection of critical essays on contemporary poetry, art, culture, and politics that investigates the current state of these fields by bringing together writings on the work of a number of poets and visual artists. Reading the social poetically and poetry socially, Gilbert illuminates poetic and artistic practices in the present and creates a new discourse for thinking beyond postmodernism. Both meticulous and comprehensive, Another Future makes an important contribution to the critical discussion of contemporary poetry and cultural aesthetics.
Essays cover authors, artists, and topics such as the Barbie Liberation Organization, Anselm Berrigan, Brenda Coultas, documentary aesthetics, Benjamin Friedlander, globalization, Andreas Gursky, Renee Gladman, Kevin Killian, David LaChapelle, Harryette Mullen, Mark Nowak, Keith Piper, pirate radio, "post-black" art, Martha Rosler, Edward Sanders, Andrew Schelling, Allan Sekula, September 11th, Prageeta Sharma, Roberto Tejada, Lorenzo Thomas, Anne Waldman, and the Zapatistas.
Introduction
CONSIDERING HOW MATERIAL DOCUMENTS CAN BE
The Present Versus (the) Now
Sound Mappings: free103point9's Constructive Engagement
Anne Waldman Changing the Frequency
The Information of Art: A Martha Rosler Retrospective
Fade to Black: Kevin Killian's Argento Series
The Costs of Style: Harryette Mullen and Freestyle
Adding Up to Plural: On the Work of Roberto Tejada
Poetry As Document, or The Y2K Problem Is the Illusion of Starting at Zero
Form and Culture
TERRITORIES AND OTHER FORMS OF KNOWING
re:Reading the Active Reader Theory
Poetic Ethnography: Mark Nowak's Revenants
"There's no center where / similarity would begin": C.S. Giscombe's Giscome Road and Here
A Global View: Andreas Gursky at Matthew Marks Gallery
Ghost Stories: Renee Gladman's Juice
Poetry and Reportage: Andrew Schelling's The Road to Ocosingo
What Are the Alternatives?—Lorenzo Thomas' Extraordinary Measures, for Example
MEANING POLITICS WITHOUT REGRETS
"Startling and Effective": Writing Art and Politics after 9/11
Countercultural Studies: Edward Sanders' 1968: A History in Verse
Shine a Dark Light on It: Benjamin Friedlander's A Knot Is Not a Tangle
Picking Up the Diasporic Pieces: Keith Piper at the New Museum
"How Soon Is Now?": Anselm Berrigan, Prageeta Sharma, Greg Fuchs, Magdalena Zurawski, and the New Independents
Building Locations: Recent Work by Ben Polsky
Musical Chairs in Public Spaces: Brenda Coultas' The Bowery Project
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
Alan Gilbert is an independent scholar and poet. He lives in Brooklyn, New York
"For those who wonder at the meaning (and the why) of much contemporary high and low culture—and where did it spring from, where is it going—Mr. Gilbert offers plenty of interesting ideas, concepts, and explanations, using a wide range of examples (there are a generous amount of illustrations) that intrigue and illuminate."
~Iconoclast
""For those who wonder at the meaning (and the why) of much contemporary high and low culture—and where did it spring from, where is it going—Mr. Gilbert offers plenty of interesting ideas, concepts, and explanations, using a wide range of examples (there are a generous amount of illustrations) that intrigue and illuminate.""
~Iconoclast
""Alan Gilbert's collection of essays contributes to a distressingly small field-interdisciplinary studies of contemporary poetry. Very few books about recent poetry place the work in larger contexts-whether those be political, cultural, historical, or artistic... Gilbert's critiques hit the mark with occasional brilliance... What's wonderful about Another Future is its attention to marvelous, underappreciated poets and the care with which Gilbert reads them.""
~American Book Review
"As the theoretical bubble bursts, Alan Gilbert brings us back to the attention poetry demands, with its local nuances, terms, and conditions. With referential breadth and political acuity, Another Future deftly traces cultures in the making within the confines of social space."
~Ammiel Alcalay, author of From the Warring Factions
"As the theoretical bubble bursts, Alan Gilbert brings us back to the attention poetry demands, with its local nuances, terms, and conditions. With referential breadth and political acuity, Another Future deftly traces cultures in the making within the confines of social space."
~Ammiel Alcalay, author of From the Warring Factions
"Gilbert is brilliant. With a clear and intelligent prose style that is intellectually rigorous and jargon-free, he has found a vital and useful vocabulary with which to describe and investigate what's really new in North American poetry.""
~Peter Gizzi, author of Some Values of Landscape and Weather